SEO Essentials Book Review – Can This E-Book Deliver A Top 10 Search Engine Ranking?

Michael Kwan is fast becoming a review king and he’s offered to help me out here at Entrepreneurs-Journey too. In this review, Michael investigates an e-book by Eric Brown called “SEO Essentials For a Top 10 Search Engine Ranking”. Read on to see if Michael thinks this book will help you improve your search engine rankings…

SEO Essentials e-Book by Eric Brown

You can find a list of other reviews and links to the products and resources I use to run my online business in the Resources Section of this website.

Search engine optimization. It’s a term that every website owner should know and it’s a concept that many of us obsess over for our dot com endeavors. We want to rank as high as possible on as many search engines as possible, driving targeted traffic toward our websites so that we can hopefully make some money from these visitors. The money part of the equation can come from advertising, product sales, affiliate commissions… that part of the picture has limitless opportunities. But before you can even attempt to make money, you need visitors, and SEO plays a huge part in getting you those visitors.

Like everything else, the SEO industry is powered by money, so its secrets are closely guarded — at least they have been until now.

It’s arguable whether SEO is really as simple as Brown makes it out to be, but when his e-book boasts a hefty 191 pages of text, diagrams, and hints, you start to wonder just how simple it really is. Is this e-book really going to launch your site onto the first page of Google search results for “iPhone”? How about “Viagra” or “Search Engine Marketing”? Let’s find out.

Your Goal, His Tips

Very early on in the e-book, Eric Brown states that your obvious goal is “to appear in the top 10 search engine results for your selected keywords and/or keyword phrases.” That much is clear. This is because “search engines provide the best source of targeted website traffic available on the Internet today, with between 60 and 85 percent of all Internet purchases started with a search conducted by a visitor at a search engine.”

If you want to increase your sales, increasing your exposure via search engine optimization and search engine marketing is probably a good place to start. But you already knew that. It’s the getting there that’s the challenge.

Description Before Education

While Eric Brown’s e-book is 191 pages long, as I’ve already said, it should be noted that the actual education on search engine optimization doesn’t start until Chapter 6, which kicks off on page 78. The first 77 pages are filled with basic background information that will serve as a foundation for any SEO work you will do. Without this groundwork, none of the search engine optimization lessons would make any sense.

In the foundational chapters, Eric covers such popular topics as understanding HTML code, niche markets, domain names, and design & structure. Interspersed in the massive body of text are a small handful of diagrams meant to help illustrate what Eric is trying to say.

The 11 Step Program for Search Engine Superstars

Realistically, it’s Chapter 8 that serves as the meat and potatoes to the SEO e-book. The other chapters are informative and well-written, sure, but for most of the people who are reading this review, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard it before. As Eric says, SEO is simpler than most people make it out to be.

Chapter 8, 11 Steps to SEO Success, is 38 pages long. It starts with a website analysis and an evaluation of your niche market. This is important, because before you can set on any sort of marketing journey, you have to understand your target market and how you can best address their needs (and attract their attention). I’m not going to dish out the details — you’re going to have to buy the book for that — but you’ll find that going through the 11 steps will require a lot of evaluation, research, and eventually, optimization. The last step is in the program talks about keeping proper records and tracking what has been done.

Although some people may glaze over Chapter 6 — Search Engine Optimization — it can also serve as a great launching point for an Internet marketer. Sections in this chapter will help you with onsite optimization, offsite optimization, SEO copywriting (and how it’s different from general copywriting), and “algorithm factoring”.

Buy SEO Essentials for Under $55

Eric’s book is on sale for $54.17, a $13 savings off the regular price of $67.17, through SEOTips4U.com. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be an affiliate program in place, so you can’t make any residual income for helping Eric Brown sell his e-book. This could probably be the next natural progression for Mr. Brown’s journey through Internet marketing.

That’s assuming that he can follow his own tips and rank in Google for “SEO”, “search engine marketing”, or “SEO Tips”.

Michael hasn’t really said whether he thinks this book is good or bad and who should or should not consider buying it.

IMO SEOBook by Aaron Wall is the “authoritative guide” to SEO. It can be a bit advanced in parts but it is a rock solid guide to what is and isn’t important. You’ll probably have to read it a couple of times.

Yes and no, basic SEO is simple but advanced SEO can be mind bogglingly complicated. In a lot of cases, basic SEO is all that’s needed. Having said that, you probably won’t get too many top ten rankings for competitive terms with basic SEO alone.

That’s a nice review, it would be helpful to also include the price at the top of the review near the summary.

@Carlo, that was also my first thought – how does it shape up to Aaron Wall’s book. What we really need is not so much an individual review of each book, but a side-by-side comparison of the two. There are probably others out there too.

There are tons of books on SEO – I have one coming out one day soon for blogs too. I think Aaron has a huge lead simply because he’s the preeminent expert and of course his book is pretty darn comprehensive.

I’ve emailed Michael and hopefully he’ll jump in here and offer more feedback about the book and perhaps clarify whether he recommends people buy it or not (a good point for future reviews as well).

Blaine – Well spotted about the affiliate program (though I hate shareasale), not that we would promote as an affiliate in the sponsored review, but worth noting given Michael’s comments in the review.

Yaro and Michael, I appreciate your review of my ebook, SEO Essentials For a Top 10 Search Engine Ranking.

I would like to answer a few of the questions asked about the ebook up to this point and I will be glad to answer later questions also.

On my website I included a section for an SEO challenge, which I discuss in the ebook, where I use the information provided in the ebook to attempt to gain a top 10 search engine ranking for the keyword phrase “learn seo”, which is the main target market phrase for my ebook.

I started the website in its present form in late June of this year. The seo challenge ran from July 1st – September 30th of this year during the actual period that I was writing the ebook.

The SEO challenge results are listed month by month with daily results for the Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines. The URL address for the seo results is provided at: http://www.seotips4u.com/seochseenra.html

The current search engine rankings, as of today, for the keyword phrase “learn seo” are as follows: Google rank is #6, Yahoo rank is currently not in the top 30 but the highest rank in this search engine has been #15, but the ranking will improve over time with Yahoo updates, and the current MSN search engine ranking is #1.

I completed the ebook last month. The target market for the ebook ranges from the newest of beginners to the intermediate level in relation to SEO.

This is the first of a three part series of SEO related ebooks I will write. The next ebook will focus on more advance topics related to SEO.

However, for individuals interested primarily in learning basic to intermediate level SEO, learning how to gain and maintain high search engine rankings and building a strong foundation in search engine optimization, my current ebook provides the information needed to accomplish these goals.

I wrote the ebook from a website owner point of view because that is my involvement on the Internet. I own and operate niche market websites; I do not own or operate an SEO business.

I have been helping people with search engine optimization for several years as a friend and fellow entrepreneur at no charge, but you can only help a few people in this manner; so, I wrote the ebook to provide information to a larger segment of Internet entrepreneurs who might find the information useful in their day-to-day Internet activities.

The ebook has a 365-day money back guarantee and I priced the ebook in a price range that is probably lower than most ebooks on the topic material; but my primary focus related to this ebook is helping the readers improve their search engine rankings and learn search engine optimization.

Again Yaro. I appreciate the review on your blog and I will be glad to answer any questions that your visitors might have regarding my ebook.

I haven’t had a chance to read SEOBook by Aaron Hall, so I can’t really compare the two. With this e-book, I say that it’s a good start for many beginners, because it provides much of the groundwork before you can get into any of the heavy stuff. If you feel that you are an intermediate to advanced SEO person, then this book may not be for you.

Eric – Thanks for the long explanation and wow – a 365 day money back guarantee!

I think to answer the question comparing the two books – both SEOBook and Eric’s SEO Essentials book will provide a ton of information about SEO. Sure there will be content overlap, but if SEO is your focus at the moment and you get a few unique insights from both books and you have a means to leverage the traffic boost you could get from a top ten ranking that far outweighs the cost of the books – well you should be buying both!

If you don’t have the cash or a means to recoup your investment cost, then perhaps you should be studying free resources for a while yet.

Personally I like my ebooks nowadays to be around the 50 page mark at most, so if I had one complaint about both books is that they are too long!

The e-book looks good at a beginner perspective, but it certainly doesn’t compare to Aaron’s SEO book, nothing out there doesn’t remotely come close. If you want to learn SEO buy his book, Eric’s e-book is not very complete.

At my blog, NoviceSEO.com I have attempted to document my SEO learning experience. I have had success in taking a website from 600 to 14 in 100 days for a website in the highly competative truck driver recruiting industry. I used SEOBook by Aaron Wall as a guide along with other info gleaned from reading many of the excellent blogs on SEO techniques.

Now I am at a plateau. I started with 8 primary search terms with all but one ranking between 200 and 600 on google. They are now all in the top 40 with 6 in the top 20.

Maybe the information in this Ebook will help me get over that plateau and move from the 20s to the top ten for these…….

I’ll make the purchase…….use the info in this ebook and then document what works on blog as I did for SEOBook. To me the price is a small investment for the potential return…… Let’s see what happens….

Thanks Yaro and Michael for the review. SEO is at the back of every marketer’s mind, and there are so much to learn. Having 191 pages may seem pretty daunting to read, especially if the real education starts towards the end. However, I think the initial chapters are even more important if you really want to understand the true concepts of SEO and how simple it can be.

The e-book looks good at a beginner perspective, but it certainly doesn’t compare to Aaron’s SEO book, nothing out there doesn’t remotely come close. If you want to learn SEO buy his book, Eric’s e-book is not very complete.

I purchased this eBook about 3 – 4 months back and am VERY happy with the results. Search engine traffic
has gone way higher then it was before by following a few simple steps. The $79 or what ever it cost me at the time has been paid back a number of times over.

This is the first eBook I have purchased and I do feel that $79 is money very well spent!